Memorial

XIV.Ray

HOW did it happen? The relationship hadn’t been sexual. A few days after he got home from the hospital, she got on top and guided him in. He wasn’t even sure he could do that anymore; a long time since he’d even felt himself hard.

Throughout, she kept herself covered with a white muslin blouse he had bought her in Artesia’s “Little India.” That’s where her cousins owned a shop, and where she was living when they 1st met, a week after going on the lam. Before, when in LA, she had a room adjoining the consul’s suite at a hotel in West Hollywood called the Wyndham Bel Age. Sometimes the CG would stay on a few days after his wife and children returned to San Francisco. In that case, Ghulpa joined her cousins at the house in Artesia. They’d cook and catch up and go to a concert in Cerritos.

When Ray finally met the extended family, everyone smiled with closed lips and bobbling heads. The thing the old man liked was that no one had to do any explaining, nothing was compulsory, he didn’t have to say who he was or why he was so old or what he did for a living or what he and Big Gulp were up to. Didn’t have to announce his intentions. No one was judgmental, just friendly. BG and the cousins spoke Bengali. Sometimes it was pretty obvious the ladies were talking about him but it seemed they wanted Ray to know it, all very coquettish and warm, lots of sweet laughter, and he soaked it in. He’d been away from women way too long. Hell, he wasn’t a bad-looking geezer and occasionally got the feeling they were extolling his physical virtues, not his decrepitude — could be a cultural thing. (He allowed he may have gotten that one wrong.) Now suddenly they were sleeping together, a for-real shackjob, a very adult arrangement, and he knew Ghulpa was too old to conceal it through pride; and old enough to share with the cousins whatever details she wished out of the same emotion. He didn’t know much from Indians but the onus on women of a certain age without a partner seemed universal. For all he knew, the ladies were sitting around asking Big Gulp when she thought the old fart would pop the question. Maybe he was remiss but he couldn’t fathom getting hitched. He’d always been extra gentlemanly with her because that part of his life had already peeled off, like shadows do if you walk quickly at dusk. He couldn’t know her expectations. He would cross that bridge when she led him there.

Straddling him, grunting, her sweat-beaded bindi like a tear in the 3rd eye, Ray Rausch wondered if his brush with death had made Ghulpa affectionate this way; accelerating the process, so to speak. He could smell the Cadbury on her breath but they didn’t kiss that much during the act, more with lips than tongues. (Indian gals sure loved their Cadburys.) He remembered that 1st day on the pier, he had wondered about her, if she was a loose woman, because her purse gaped and he caught a glimpse of a toiletry bag, zipper half-open as well, stocked with toothbrush, toothpaste, and tampons. Later, he realized most Indian ladies carried that sort of thing — and loved their sweets. Big Gulp always talked about having “floss on bamboo sticks” back in Calcutta. It took him a heck of a while to realize she meant cotton candy.

That was how it happened: dark, fathomless, Ghulpa’s almond eyes whitening in their sockets toward the end as he felt himself seize inside her while she clawed his gray-haired chest, threadbare patches from where bandages and EKG suction “thingies” (BG’s favorite word) had been roughly ripped away. He had the fleeting thought he might have another heart attack — die in the saddle — but there was no pain, only surprise, and then he felt the dig of her nails, that was what hurt, finally grabbing her tiny hands so she’d lighten up just a little. That’s when she seized, slowly arching her head, which ever so slowly came back down to bobblesmile its naughtily sated sumptuously wayward Cadbury grin. Everything old is new again.

Ghulpa went to the powder room and after a minute returned with a hot cloth. She wiped him down then covered her man up in the thin Target comforter just like swaddling a baby. She disappeared again and he lay there dreamy as a girl. When she came back, BG turned on his television, kissed his cheek, and went to the kitchen to cook. He felt mannish, restful, and comfortable in full measure.

Tomorrow they would visit Nip/Tuck at the animal hospital on Sepulveda. It was a long haul. The fellow in the paper was right, they ought to build monorails in LA, not subways. Subways are for cold climates. Wouldn’t it be a hoot to hop a monorail and see the Friar? Chess and Joanie loved the ones at Disneyland. He’d heard there were monorails in Vegas now. He mightily missed that dog. The Friar was gonna get himself a hero’s welcome, for sure — their lawyer had suggested piñatas and party hats. It was the 1st damn thing Ray and the man could agree on.

The smell of spices wafted in and he heard Big Gulp singing.